Aug. 18 green grape juice 8 pints. Rough year for bird robberies. I think that with the destruction of the Bosque south of us, their habitat has been lost and they find our yard is a bonanza!
Aug. 18 green grape juice 8 pints. Rough year for bird robberies. I think that with the destruction of the Bosque south of us, their habitat has been lost and they find our yard is a bonanza!
August 5
37 pints and one 3/4 pint of applesauce from the cinnamon something apple tree--the biggest in the middle 40. These apples ripen early and go soft very fast so I had to bottle on an over 100F day. But we will enjoy them come winter.
Aug 11
31 pints of applesauce from other trees in the yard. One was made of mostly the apples with a rough tan skin. These apples are dense and dry and not all that flavorful when cooked. The jars are marked with a code +s &c ? meaning that sugar and cinnamon can be added to make it more flavorful. The other jars were made from a mix of various apples in the yard and a few old eating apples from last winter. It's a bit better but I think the most flavorful applesauce comes from the largest tree in the middle of the middle 40.
In September I have canned:
6-7 pints grape juice both pure purple grape and a blend of purple and white arbor grapes
10- 12 half pints grape jelly same as above. I did one recipe of the Ball Jar company grape jelly recipe and then found that I prefer the recipe for jelly that is in the ATK canning book, for both pure grape and blended
salsa is an ongoing effort. Over 60 pints with last batch done end of October. If I had time I could do another batch in November but..............
5 half pints Chocolate Pear Jam
7 half pints Pear Jelly
10 half pints Strawberry Plum Jam which is now my favorite treatment for plum jam although I've only tried it with Italian plums which are sweeter than our sour plums.
I steamed juiced a pan full of pear quarters for the juice I used in jelly and in pear butter. I'm at this moment steaming another pan full and will freeze the left over pear pieces for smoothies
The pear butter from ATK is best because it uses no added sugar.
Another batch of pear butter (ATK) and a small batch of pear plum jam--Marisa McClellan recipe
Made freezer chocolate pear jam and sauce from a canned recipe but I used only 1 pd of sugar so I couldn't can it. For the syrup, I removed some of the pear mixture before it got to the jammy point so it's thinner.
Refrigerator pear caramel. Made more than 2 pints of that. That's a WaPo recipe.
I've forgotten to record things so I'll reconstruct:
July and August about 6 bottles each of white and purple grape juice, sweetened because that's what Leon likes
September and October and into November (with roasted and frozen tomatoes)
75 bottles roasted tomato salsa (2 jars are 1-cup, so 74 pints total) so far
I will bottle at least 3 more batches because I still have frozen roasted tomatoes in the freezer
November 4
8 pint jars of marinara sauce (Ball recipe, included in blog)
I have forgotten to note the dates this year. I have bottled white grape juice (according to national center for food preservation website) and white grape jelly and I made apple sauce from the Cinnamon Strawberry tree in the middle-40.
I also made a plum/orange jam from BATCH and a honey sweetened pear/plum jam from the book Food in Jars, not the website.
Sept. 28, 2021 I've made 3 types of apple butter--a heavily spiced from foodinjars.com, cooked in the slow cooker and then one with lots of lemon juice (called for fresh but I used bottled) from suburbanhomesteader youtube video. She juiced the pears and then made a puree (victorio strainer) and then cooked it down with sugar and lemon juice--remember to weigh the pears before juicing to do this method. I had enough puree left that I also made the pear butter in the Cooks Illustrated canning book which can be frozen. I did this because I went from the puree rather than from fresh pears and wasn't sure how that would work. They use pure pear juice as a sweetener. Since I'm going to freeze this I'm not as worried about the substitution. It's good but noticeably less sweet. I'm going to do taste tests and will note which I like best.
I've frozen lots of tomatoes in various forms. 8 pints of chopped tomatoes, tomatoes for salsa, already roasted and waiting for when I want to do the canning.
Of note: This year the blackberries were late, the white peaches quite late. The pears are still not finished and it's the end of September. The Italian plums are just now off the tree. The chinese dates are bigger than other years but still small. The Cinnamon Strawberry apples were earlyish and went mellow very fast. Practically mush inside their skins by the time I made applesauce. The yellow/red peaches were gone by the time I returned home from Holland around the 20th of August--lucky beetles and lucky friends.